Abstract

Objective:

To clarify the moderating and mediating effects of different types of life events on the relationships between personality traits and adolescent’s behavioral problems among 354 high school students in Taiwan.

Methods:

A school-based two-wave panel study was administered to 354 high school students. Sobel test was used to examine the complicated roles of life events in the relationships between personality and behavioral problems during adolescence.

Results:

The results showed that detrimental effects of high neuroticism traits on internalizing problems can be buffered by positive independent life events and moderated by positive dependent events. Additionally, behavioral problems occurred only through negative dependent life events generated by high levels of neuroticism among depressed adolescents.

Conclusion:

Adolescents with high neuroticism traits appear to be less able to conquer the stresses derived from the positive life events and therefore develop subsequent internalizing problems.

Keywords

Introduction

Personality traits and negative life events are
related to behavioral problems, yet little attention
has been paid for the complicated mechanisms.
The relationship between personality and stress
has long been conceptualized and explained
under the context of “diathesis-stress model”
in the development of psychopathology such as
depression, anxiety, schizophrenia, or behavioral
problems [1]. According to the diathesis-stress
model, some adolescents are more vulnerable to
the stressful life events due to their personality/
temperamental characteristics. Nevertheless,
recent works showed that the interaction of
personality with life events may be not only
limited in the adverse or stressful events. Some malleable individuals are also more susceptible
than others to supportive environments
[2,3]. In such “differential susceptibility
hypothesis”, personality/temperament can
serve as a susceptibility factor to moderate life
events in a for-better-and-for-worse manner
[4]. Interestingly, stresses may not be always
triggered by negative life events. Positive events
can also act as a significant moderator to affect
mood disorders when accompanied by a very
high amount of negative events during the same
time period [5]. However, still very few studies
have tried to clarify the possible mechanism
between personality and type of life events
among adolescents to date, especially for the
development of behavioral problems.

In addition to moderating effects, literature
concerning to depression also showed that
personalities, especially high levels of neuroticism,
are capable of developing depression through the
mediation of negative life events [6]. However,
this mediational pathway only explained a part
of the relationship between neuroticism and
depressive symptoms. The onset of depression
cannot be fully explained by stressful life
events as well [7]. These findings implied that
personality traits and negative life events may not
act in restricted mechanisms in the occurrence
of depression. Many dimensions of personality
and types of life events, or other biological or
psychosocial factors, may play a role in such
relationship. Moreover, whether the mediational
pathway stands in the development of behavioral
problems warrants further investigation.

When investigating the relationships among
personality, stress, and behavioral problems, the
influences of depression should be taken into
account since depressive disorders or symptoms
were found to highly comorbid with other
emotional/behavioral problems [8]. In addition,
research has indicated that the occurrence of
depression might increase the risks of recurrence
of depression through enhancing the vulnerability
of individuals’ personality toward depression,
which is known as the scar hypothesis [9]. Under
this hypothesis, major depression may have a
direct causal effect on neuroticism [10], which
further affects the occurrence of behavioral
problems. People with depressive disorders also
are more likely to expose to more stress, which in
turn trigger subsequent episodes [11]. Moreover,
the number of stressful life events required for
re-kindling subsequent episodes significantly
decreased, and the effect of stressful life events
on major depression declined substantially with the increasing episode number [12]. These
theories implied that there may be a “feedback
mechanism” for the existence of depression
to affect some psychosocial risk factors such as
personalities and negative life events.

Adolescence is a critical time period for
personality shaping and cognitive developing.
During adolescence, many individuals start to
encounter a number of stresses. In addition,
emotional/behavioral problems [13] and
depression [14] are often highly prevalent during
this period. Data from adolescents are especially
important for clarifying the relationship
between these scenarios. In particular, the scar
mechanism did not show noticeable effects in
certain adult groups [15] while it has been
consistently reported in many children and
adolescent samples [9,16]. As such, this study
recruited late adolescence as a sample and
categorized personality traits and life events
in detail to understand the interplay between
personality traits and types of life events in
the development of behavioral problems. We
hypothesized that high neuroticism traits
on internalizing problems can be buffered
by positive independent life events, and
participants with different depressive status
would have different personality-stressbehavior
relationships.

Methods

▪ Participants

This study was a school-based two-wave panel
study. Participants were randomly selected from
two from public general high schools and two
from public vocational high schools, in Changhua
County, Taiwan. After a complete description of
the study was given by research assistants, 460
students were invited to participate in the study
and completed a self-reported questionnaire and
underwent a face-to-face psychiatric diagnostic
interview by well-trained interviewers. Six
months later, a second wave assessment was
only performed on 359 of the 460 participants
because graduating seniors at three schools
were not able to cooperate with the process of
this study. Moreover, individuals with more
than 10% of the items unanswered in the selfreported
questionnaire (n=5) were also excluded
from the analyses. Therefore, a total number of
354 adolescents were used in the analysis of this
study. Approval for the study was granted by
the Institutional Review Board of Chung Shan
Medical University Hospital (CS07052).

▪ Measures

Youth Self-Report (YSR)

Behavioral problems of the participants were
evaluated by the YSR [17], which included 118
behavioral items. These behavioral items enable
the categorization of children and adolescents
into three broad-band syndromes (Internalizing,
Externalizing, and Total Problems). The YSR
exhibited satisfactory internal consistency in this
study, with Cronbach’s α for the Total Problems
range from .93 at baseline to .94 at follow-up.

Junior Eysenck Personality Questionnaire
(JEPQ)

This study used the JEPQ [18] to assess
participants’ personality traits. It comprises
81 true or false questions which constitute
three dimensions in terms of psychoticism,
neuroticism, and extroversion. The Cronbach’s
α of the JEPQ were good both for the baseline
(.80) and panel (.81) assessments. Moreover,
mean raw scores of the three traits did not
show significant differences between two waves,
indicating that students in the present study
had stable personalities by late adolescence. As
a result, this study only used baseline personality
traits as variables for predicting subsequent
behavioral problems.

Life Event Checklist (LEC)

The LEC [19] was used to assess participants’ life
events over the past year. Participants filled out
the presence (yes vs. no) of the 46 events in LEC.
The first 18 items represent independent events
which refer to uncontrollable events by the
individual, e.g., the death of a family member.
The rest 28 items represent dependent events that
could happen through personal manipulation,
such as making the honor role. For each event
endorsed, the respondent was further inquired
about the type (positive vs. negative) of the
event. To explore the effects of different types
of events, independent and dependent events
were further categorized by “positive” and
“negative” in this study. Therefore, four types
of life events in terms of positive independent,
negative independent, positive dependent, and
negative dependent were categorized in this
study. Cumulative numbers and types of events
were then used in the analyses. Cronbach’s α for
the current sample was .80 to .86.

Schedule for Affective Disorders and
Schizophrenia for School-Age Children and
Adolescents (K-SADS-E)

Current and lifetime major depressive disorder
(MDD) was diagnosed by using the K-SADS-E
[20] based on the DSM-IV criteria. It was found
to be an adequate tool for epidemiological
research among Taiwanese adolescents [14].
This research also included depression types that
were not fully met MDD criteria, including
dysthymic disorder (DD), minor depressive
disorder, subsyndromal symptomatic depression
(SSD) [21], and other subthreshold depression.
For convenience, they were all categorized as
“subthreshold depression” wherever necessary.
Adolescents with no depressive disorders at both
waves were categorized as non-depressed group.

▪ Data analysis

Participants with more than 10% missing of the
questionnaire were excluded from the analyses.
For those who include but with incomplete
data (n=142), multiple imputation procedures
were employed to impute the missing values by
using the Markov Chain Monte Carlo method.
The tenth imputation value was used as final
result. Partial correlations were used to examine
the correlations among behavioral problems,
personality traits, and life events after controlling
for gender, age, and school system. The
interactions between personality traits and types
of life events on behavioral problems were tested
in the multiple regression models controlling for
gender, age, and school system. Conceptually,
the “diathesis-stress model” is supported if some
personality trait(s) interact only with negative
life events (with the interaction term a positive
regression coefficient) but not with positive ones;
whereas the “differential susceptibility theory” is
supported if some personality trait(s) interact
with both negative and positive life events
(with the interaction term a positive regression
coefficient for the former and a negative one for
the latter). All models were tested by separating
depressed and non-depressed adolescents to
examine the influence of depressive status. To
further delineate the patterns of interaction,
personality traits were categorized as high and
low levels according to the cutoff point of 25th percentile of the raw scores of JEPQ subscales.
Sobel test [22] was performed to clarify whether
a specific type of life event was a mediational
variable on the pathways of personality traits
to behavioral problems. To meet temporality,
baseline personality traits and behavioral
problems at follow-up was used for analyses.
Life events assessed at follow-up were analyzed
as possible mediational variables because they
occurred in the past year. To conduct Sobel test,direct effects (represented as c’) were subtracted
from the total effects (represented as c) between
predictive variables (personality traits) and
outcome variables (behavioral problems). A
value of (c-c’) significantly different from 0
represents mediational effects existed. The 95%
confidence interval (CI) for the (c-c’) value was
calculated using bootstrapping method; and the
number of simulation was set at 5,000 make sure
the 95% CI for the (c-c’) value can be converged
and stable [23].

Results

Of the 354 adolescents, there were approximately
equal amount between females (n=172, 48.6%)
and males (n=182, 51.4%). The majority were
the eleventh graders (n=167, 47.2%) or the tenth
graders (n=153, 43.2%); and the twelfth graders
were relatively minor (n=34, 9.6%). The average
age was 16.7 (SD=0.7). More participants
attended general high schools (n=224, 63.3%)
than vocational high schools (n=130, 36.7%).

Lifetime prevalence rates of MDD at baseline
and follow-up were estimated as 11.30%
(40/354) and 16.38% (58/354), respectively.
For DD, minor depression, SSD, and other
subthreshold depression, the lifetime estimation
at baseline were 2.54%, 1.98%, 0.56%, and
3.67%, respectively. Six months later, the rates
were substantially elevated to 3.39%, 3.39%,
1.13%, and 8.76%, respectively. Due to a low
prevalence of each depressive diagnosis in our
adolescent sample, we combined participants
with subthreshold depression and MDD as
the depressed group (n=98) in the subsequent
analyses to avoid insufficient statistical power.

Table 1 shows the partial correlations among
baseline variables separated by depressed and
non-depressed adolescents. After considering
corrections for multiple comparisons, variables
in the non-depressed group were more likely to
be correlated with each other than those in the
depressed group. Life events of non-depressed
adolescents were not only related to each other
but also had significant correlations with different
behavioral problems (especially Externalizing
and Total Problems) and personality traits;
whereas none of them, except for the negative
dependent events, had significant correlation
with behavioral problems or personality
traits among depressed adolescents. For both
depressed and non-depressed adolescents, there
were significant positive correlations between
behavioral problems (r=.49 to .89) and between
behavioral problems and neuroticism (r=.49 to
.76). Psychoticism had a positive correlation with
Externalizing (r=.61), Total Problems (r=.36),
and neuroticism (r=.36) among depressed
adolescents. The panel data shared similar results
with the baseline ones; therefore, the explanation
was omitted.

(1)

(2)

(3)

(4)

(5)

(6)

(7)

(8)

(9)

(10)

(11)

(12)

(13)

(1) Internalizing

─

.49*

.89*

.75*

-.28

.20

.23

.16

.20

.17

.38*

.05

.01

(2) Externalizing

.49*

─

.78*

.53*

.07

.61*

.28

.27

.20

.26

.39*

.10

-.02

(3) Total Problems

.87*

.79*

─

.76*

-.13

.36*

.28

.23

.22

.23

.47*

.07

-.05

(4) Neuroticism

.72*

.49*

.72*

─

-.28

.36*

.24

.30

.15

.29

.36*

.14

-.05

(5) Extroversion

-.33*

.13

-.11

-.19

─

.17

.14

.12

.09

.13

-.03

.05

.13

(6) Psychoticism

.25*

.55*

.43*

.26*

.15

─

.29

.27

.22

.26

.21

.10

.13

(7) Total life events

.22

.40*

.33*

.17

.28*

.28*

─

.79*

.90*

.71*

.64*

.41*

.71*

(8) Independent LE

.18

.24*

.25*

.13

.09

.15

.72*

─

.49*

.87*

.41*

.59*

.32

(9) Dependent LE

.19

.40*

.30*

.17

.30*

.30*

.89*

.34*

─

.46*

.66*

.18

.84*

(10) Negative independent LE

.21

.28*

.28*

.14

.11

.14

.64*

.86*

.33*

─

.39*

.13

.33

(11) Negative dependent LE

.26*

.39*

.35*

.31*

.11

.34*

.61*

.31*

.64*

.34*

─

.17

.19

(12) Positive independent LE

.03

.06

.05

.03

.04

.09

.39*

.60*

.14

.13

.07

─

.09

(13) Positive dependent LE

.07

.24*

.14

.02

.31*

.15

.69*

.20

.81*

.15

.11

.16

─

Notes. All analyses were controlled for gender, age, and school system.
Above diagonal: subjects with depressive disorders; under diagonal: subjects without depressive disorders.
* p < .00035 according to the Bonferroni correction for multiple comparisons (.05/144)

After controlling for gender, age, and school
system, only neuroticism showed significant
interaction with positive independent life events
among depressed adolescents (b=-.35, p=.019)
and with positive dependent life events among
non-depressed adolescents (b=.10, p=.032) in
predicting internalizing behavioral problems
(Figure 1). No interactions were found between
personality traits and life events in the occurrence
of externalizing behavioral problems.

Figure 1: CInteraction patterns of numbers of positive life events with levels of neuroticism on the scores of internalizing behavioral problems.
(A) Showing the positive independent life events among depressed adolescents; (B) Showing the positive dependent life events among depression free
adolescents.

▪ Mediational effects

Table 2 shows the results of Sobel test by
depressed and non-depressed adolescents. For
depressed adolescents, the effect of neuroticism
could be mediated by negative dependent events
on Total Problems ((c-c’)=.27, 95% CI: .01 to
.63), Externalizing ((c-c’)=.07, 95% CI: .01 to
.19), and Internalizing ((c-c’)=.09, 95% CI: .01
to .22). No other types of life events showed
mediational effect between personality traits and
behavioral problems.

Life events at follow-up as potential mediator

Depressed adolescents (n=98)

Non-depressed adolescents (n=256)

Neuroticism

Extroversion

Psychoticism

Neuroticism

Extroversion

Psychoticism

(c-c’)

95% CI

(c-c’)

95% CI

(c-c’)

95% CI

(c-c’)

95% CI

(c-c’)

95% CI

(c-c’)

95% CI

Behavioral outcome: Total Problems

Total

.14

-.02 to .44

.10

-.09 to .32

.04

-.53 to .81

.08*

.01 to .20

.29*

.12 to .49

.29*

.01 to .68

Independent

.08

-.04 to .32

-.01

-.17 to .15

.01

-.42 to .62

.06

-.01 to .15

.07

-.05 to .22

.16

-.04 to .45

Dependent

.14

-.06 to .47

.17

-.05 to .42

-.00

-.64 to .83

.05

-.01 to .15

.25*

.09 to .43

.20

-.01 to .52

Neg. independent

.16

-.03 to .49

-.04

-.25 to .17

.19

-.33 to 1.00

.09*

.01 to .20

.03

-.10 to .19

.22

-.05 to .59

Neg. dependent

.27*

.01 to .63

.07

-.22 to .38

.65

-.16 to 1.86

.23*

.09 to .40

.04

-.15 to .22

.64*

.13 to .22

Pos. independent

.03

-.08 to .14

-.05

-.20 to .07

.15

-.12 to .57

-.01

-.04 to .03

.01

-.03 to .11

.01

-.06 to .11

Pos. dependent

.01

-.09 to .21

.06

-.09 to .23

-.22

-.82 to .24

-.01

-.04 to .03

.01

-.16 to .18

-.01

-.13 to .09

Behavioral outcome: Internalizing

Total

.06

-.01 to .16

.04

-.04 to .15

.02

-.23 to .34

.01

-.01 to .04

.10*

.04 to .17

.06

-.01 to .18

Independent

.03

-.02 to .11

-.00

-.06 to .06

.01

-.16 to .26

.01

-.01 to .03

.02

-.01 to .06

.03

-.02 to .11

Dependent

.06

-.03 to .17

.08

-.02 to .20

-.01

-.29 to .34

.01

-.01 to .04

.09*

.03 to .17

.05

-.04 to .16

Neg. independent

.06

-.01 to .17

-.02

-.10 to .07

.09

-.13 to .45

.01

-.01 to .04

.01

-.03 to .05

.06

-.02 to .17

Neg. dependent

.09*

.01 to .22

.03

-.09 to .16

.25

-.06 to .74

.06*

.01 to .20

.01

-.05 to .08

.23*

.05 to .45

Pos. independent

.01

-.03 to .07

-.02

-.10 to .03

.09

-.05 to .30

-.00

-.01 to .10

.00

-.02 to .03

-.00

-.03 to .03

Pos. dependent

.01

-.06 to .10

.04

-.03 to .12

-.13

-.44 to .09

.00

-.01 to .02

.02

-.05 to .08

-.01

-.08 to .04

Behavioral outcome: Externalizing

Total

.03

-.01 to .12

.02

-.02 to .07

.01

-.12 to .19

.04*

.01 to .09

.09*

.04 to .17

.12*

.01 to .27

Independent

.01

-.03 to .09

-.00

-.05 to .03

.00

-.10 to .14

.03

-.00 to .07

.02

-.02 to .08

.06

-.02 to .17

Dependent

.03

-.02 to .13

.03

-.01 to .10

-.00

-.14 to .19

.02

-.01 to .07

.07*

.02 to .14

.08*

.01 to .22

Neg. independent

.04

-.03 to .14

-.01

-.07 to .03

.04

-.07 to .25

.04*

.01 to .09

.01

-.03 to .07

.08

-.02 to .22

Neg. dependent

.07*

.01 to .20

.02

-.06 to .10

.15

-.03 to .45

.08*

.03 to .14

.01

-.04 to .06

.17*

.03 to .34

Pos. independent

.01

-.04 to .06

-.02

-.06 to .03

.04

-.05 to .20

-.00

-.02 to .01

.01

-.01 to .04

.01

-.02 to .05

Pos. dependent

.00

-.02 to .05

.00

-.05 to .05

-.03

-.19 to .10

-.01

-.03 to .01

.01

-.05 to .07

.01

-.03 to .06

Notes. (c-c’) refers to the difference of ‘total effect’ and ‘direct effect.’ The higher value of (c-c’) shows, the more likely mediational effect exists.
All 95 % CIs were derived from the bootstrapping estimations after 5,000 simulations. * refers to the 95 % CI of (c-c’) uncovered zero.

Table 2: Mediational effects of life events on the relationships between personality traits and behavioral problems, stratified
by depressive status of adolescents.

As for adolescents without depressive disorders,
high levels of neuroticism still exhibited effects on all types of behavioral problems through
the mediation of negative dependent events.
Moreover, negative dependent events also served
as a mediator between psychoticism and all
behavioral problems. For negative independent
events, the mediational effect only emerged
for neuroticism on the Total Problems and
Externalizing. Total life events could mediate
all dimensions of personality traits on Total
Problems and Externalizing. The relationships
between extroversion trait and all behavioral
problems could also be mediated by total life
events and dependent events.

Discussion

The main findings of the present study were that
only neuroticism trait interacts with positive
life events in the development of internalizing behavioral problems. In addition, the pathway
depends on whether depression exists and
the type of positive events. Depressed young
people who have high levels of neuroticism
traits and who have been exposed to positive
independent life events would be less likely to
develop internalizing behavioral problems. This
finding suggests that adolescents with different
levels of neuroticism may differ in how they
respond to uncontrolled positive life events
and thus express these differences with regards
to internalizing problems. During depressed
period, uncontrolled positive life events may
serve as buffers or protectors against internalizing
behavioral problems in adolescents with high
neuroticism trait. As neuroticism trait interacted
only with positive life events but not with
negative events in this study, the interplay of
neuroticism and life events on the development of internalizing behavioral problems of our
findings cannot be fully explained by diathesisstress
model or differential susceptibility
hypothesis. The interaction pattern of high
neuroticism with positive life events among
non-depressed adolescents was different from
that of their depressed counterparts. For those
with high levels of neuroticism, the more
positive dependent life events experienced, the
higher internalizing problem scores showed.
Generally, stresses can be triggered by positive
life events, especially controllable ones such as
making the honor role [24], and people usually
try to overcome such stress to earn feelings of
happiness and joy. Nevertheless, adolescents
with high neuroticism traits appear to be less able
to conquer the stresses derived from the positive
life events and therefore develop subsequent
internalizing problems. This point of view is
supported by some recent study [5].

In addition to moderating effects, this study also
showed mediational effects between personality
and life events. For adolescents free of depressive disorders, behavioral problems were not affected
by single pathway or restricted factors. Many
individual (personality trait) or environmental
adversities (negative life events) were able to
trigger a variety of behavioral problems through
different pathways. However, once adolescents
suffered from depressive disorders, mechanisms
from the interplay of personality and life events
to occur behavioral problems appeared to be
suppressed. Only adolescents with high levels
of neuroticism were able to exhibit behavioral
problems through the mediation of negative
dependent events. Effects of other personalities
with stressful life events on behavioral problems
became relatively insignificant. One possible
explanation is that in experiencing depression,
individuals with high levels of neuroticism
are prone to adopting more coping actions
[25], which is more likely to generate negative
dependent events and then resulting consequent
behavioral problems.

In light of stress generation theory [11], in
which depressed individuals generate stressful situations that lead to recurrence, findings
of the present study may be an extension of
Hammen’s theory. That is, the mechanism may
be attributed, in part, to some predisposition
factors such as personality traits and may be
applied to other behavioral problems since a
variety of behavior problems were predicted
by dependent events [26] and the relationships
between depression and neuroticism as well
as between dependent events and neuroticism
have been repeatedly reported.6 Recent evidence
implied that stress generation theory appears to
have its genetic basis as the relationships between
daily stressors and negative effects were partly
attributed to genetic factors [27] and the risk of
onset of major depression could be influenced by
genetic factors through altering the sensitivity of
individuals to the depression-inducing effect of
stressful life events [28]. Interestingly, genetic
influences on life events appear to be mediated
by personality [29]. Due to neuroticism trait
may potentially share the same genetic basis with
internalizing disorders such as mood and anxiety
disorders [30], and neuroticism may play an
“endophenotype” role of enhancing the genetic
signal for behavioral problems’ causal process
[31], and negative dependent life events may
also participate in such pathway as a mediator or
moderator between neuroticism and occurrence
of depression [30], we suggested that there
might be a pathway of occurrence of behavioral
problems proceeds from genetic background to
switch on the expression of personality traits
and then generate negative dependent life events
that trigger the occurrence of those problems
in adolescents. Existence of depression appears
to feedback on the pathway to reinforce the
effect of neuroticism (or suppress the effects of
other personality traits) on producing negative
life events, which in turn leads to subsequent
behavioral problems.

This inference also links our findings to the scar
mechanism. The essence of the scar mechanism
is that individuals with depression may develop
some characteristics that persist even after the
depression is recovered or remitted. These
characters, in turn, make the individuals
more susceptible to subsequent depression
occurrences. Adolescence is the key time period
for personality and cognitive development,
the adverse dimensions of personality traits
and negative cognitive patterns brought about
by depression could leave long-term or even
permanent distortion and cause subsequent onset
of depression [16]. In addition, once adolescents become depressed, they might leave personality
scars to lower the threshold of personalities and
negative life events for the subsequent occurrence
of depression [6], which further support kindling
hypothesis [12]. Notably, scar mechanism may
also have its genetic basis because there were
share genetic or environmental backgrounds
with emotional/behavioral problems, depression,
cognition, neuroticism, and negative dependent
events [31,33,34]. The emotional function and
cognitive function were linked through the
genetic polymorphism of the neural process
[30]. As such, once suffered from depression,
adolescents’ personality or cognitive scars
emerged through the mediating effects of shared
genetic or environmental factors, which increased
susceptibility toward negative dependent events
to further cause subsequent behavioral problems.
Depression during adolescence may cause
negative dependent events to happen more easily
by increasing the levels of neuroticism or the
susceptibility of neuroticism towards negative
dependent events. Depression itself is able to
lower an individual’s tolerance towards negative
dependent events as well. Therefore, depressed
adolescents could develop behavioral problems
even when they faced limited numbers of life
events.

Limitations

The findings of this study should be considered in
the context of several limitations. First, although
a longitudinal study was used, we cannot rule out
the possibility that effects of some life events on
behavioral problems may actually be the reverse
causation or the students who perceived higher
levels of depression and presented higher selfreported
levels of neuroticism highlighted these
traits and symptoms also by perceiving more
negative dependent and independent events.
Second, the high attrition rate of twelfth graders
who experienced more stressful life events could
result in a less significant mediational effect
for some types of events. Third, participants
selecting from only one county restricts our
findings to generalize to other adolescent
samples. Fourth, we cannot control for baseline
behavioral problems while using the Sobel test.
Finally, due to a high comorbidity between
depressive disorders and behavioral problems,
as well as the complicated relationship between
neuroticism and depression, the mediational
pathway of neuroticism-negative dependent
events-behavioral problems observed in
depressed adolescents in this study may be the expression of the mediational effect of negative
dependent life events between neuroticism and
depressive disorders. Despite its limitations, this
study delineated different moderating patterns
of positive life events between depressed and
non-depressed adolescents in the relationship
between neuroticism and internalizing behavioral
problems. A specific mediational mechanism
of negative life events between personality
traits and behavioral problems in depressed
adolescents was also proposed. Moreover, this
study did not support the diathesis-stress model
and differential susceptibility theory in the
explanation of the interplay between neuroticism
and life events in developing internalizing
behavioral problems. Yet we intent to propose
a theoretical extension and integration for stress
generation theory, kindling theory, and scar
mechanism in describing the mediating effect
of negative dependent life events. It outlines
directions for future research aimed at clarifying
mechanisms among psychosocial factors and
establishes strategies for preventing behavioral
problems in adolescents.

Many behavioral problems initiated during
adolescence and track into adulthood. Our
study found that neuroticism traits play
an important role on the development of
adolescent’s behavioral problems. This is
especially the case when adolescents are with
high depressive symptoms. To identify this high
risk group, it is a more feasible way by assessing
students’ personality traits than by evaluating their psychopathology for school personnel.
Screening for mental illness such as depressive
symptoms can lead to a labeling effect which
may consequently increase adolescent’s stresses
and affect their health [35]. As such, assessing
personality traits was more conservative and
acceptable as compared to that of depressive
symptoms. Once the high risk group can be
successfully identified within school, it is easier
for school personnel to effectively introduce or
provide appropriate resources and take necessary
actions. For example, middle schools may
provide mental health courses or intervention
programs for students to improve their coping
skills with negative events and enhance their
positive feelings and thinking about things
happened around. It is also important to build
a friendly school environment and infrastructure
to improve students’ quality of life. Through
these implementations, behavioral problems in
adolescents may be effectively reduced.

Acknowledgements

This study was supported, in part, by the research
grants from the National Science Council, Taiwan
(NSC96-2314-B-040-030) and from Chung
Shan Medical University (CSMU93-OM-B-011).
The authors thank all of the school teachers, students
and personnel for their participation and assistance
in this project. We would also like to acknowledge
the hard work of Chun-Wei Chiang, Wen-Ying
Shiu, and Chih-Ching Yang in collecting data.

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